Hans von Herwath

Hans Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld (14 July 1904 – 21 August 1999), also known as Johnnie or Johann von Herwarth, was a German diplomat who provided the Allies with information prior to and during the Second World War.

Herwarth was born in Berlin. His paternal grandmother, Julia von Herwarth (née Haber), was Jewish. He graduated from high school in Berlin. He studied law and economics in Berlin, Breslau and Munich.

In 1927 he entered the German Foreign Office (Auswaertiges Amt) and was first stationed in Paris. He was stationed in Moscow 1931–1939, where he met George F. Kennan, Charles W. Thayer and Charles E. Bohlen. Fitzroy Maclean, then a young diplomat in the British Embassy, states in his memoir Eastern Approaches that Herwarth condemned the appeasement of the Munich Agreement, predicted a Soviet-German commitment to non-aggression (which came to pass as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), and saw ahead to what he called "the destruction of Germany".

After 1939, he worked at the German Army Headquarters (OKW), in the Abwehr department.

From 1945 onward, Herwarth worked for the new German government, first in Munich, then in Bonn. In 1955, he became the first post-war German ambassador in London. In 1961, he was head of Bundespräsidialamt (the office of the Federal President); later he became ambassador to Rome. From 1971-77 he was president of the Goethe-Institut, responsible for cultural relations.

Herwarth, who by marriage was a cousin of Claus von Stauffenberg, belonged to the aristocratic opposition against the Nazi regime. Maclean, who thought of him as an old friend, assessed him as "a patriotic German ... strongly and genuinely anti-Nazi".

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